New Mexico Seed Temple and visit with Flordemayo

These photos from Dianna’s visit to New Mexico were taken by Gregory Schoen and show the work being done in preparation for the construction of a sacred Seed Vault. (You may click on image to view larger size)

Scroll down also to read what Dianna wrote following the trip to New Mexico…..

Excavation site for the seed vault

Seed display at the Seed Temple

Germination test for corn seeds

Little seed bundles

Seed bundles

Close up of a painting in the Seed Temple

Flordemayo with her ‘buddy’

In the warm Spring air of April 2012, I boarded the plane for Albuquerque, New Mexico from NW Arkansas International Airport. I had been asked by Grandmother Flordemayo to help with her new Seed Temple. She is the Mayan Grandmother who serves on the International Council of 13 Indigenous Grandmothers. We had been in connection for more than 4 months over the phone.

Florademayo is creating a Seed Temple along with her Temple of the Golden Child. The Temple of the Golden Child connects the seeds with the ‘Golden Peace Children’ being born into our world. This awesome desert place is being built to address the conditions we currently find in our world concerning children, and the seeds for our food for them, for many generations.

Out of this Seed Temple will go the primary seeds, for our new children. The seeds go with ceremony into the hands of young new parents with powerful hopes for a new awareness of the importance of growing our own food and teaching the growing of our food to our children. Along with these seeds also will go the teaching of how to grow them, for the keeping of both our future generations and their food. This is vital knowledge being lost in our generation. The Seed Temple seriously addresses this. Grandmother Flordemayo travels many places in a year and speaks of this with many peoples all over the world.

We need to be aware, we need to focus on providing good nutritious food for our grandchildren’s grandchildren, not just ourselves. Life itself has sustained us for all this time. But we need to do our part.

When I arrived at the temple site it was very much in construction. Greg Schoen , a corn brother from New Mexico also, joined us for the 7 days we were to be there. Grandmother could be there for 4, before her next trip. We were to meet with Grandmother and Patricio Domingues, with whom she has worked for many years with the Institute of Natural and Traditional Knowledge. We set to work to get to know each other and get started with the processes needed to carefully accept, clean, store, and distribute seeds that are being donated into the project.

A new seed coming to the Temple at this time was RAINBOW POPCORN. This is the seed of a serious effort on the part of Greg, Carl White Eagle Barnes of Oklahoma, and members of the Santa Clara Pueblo in 2008 to restore the 7 colors of the rainbow back into their popcorns. Carl White Eagle had been working on this for many years on his own. He had successfully restored the rainbow to the popcorns and dent corns by that time, through carefully following spiritual guidance and ceremonial prayers he was given. His Cherokee ancestry also played its part. He is the White Eagle who brought back the Rainbow Corn to the People.

The color in the corn seeds contains the minerals our bodies need for good nutrition. Along the way our culture has lost several of these beautiful colors for one reason or another.The greens were about unheard of by this time. And browns were very rare too. What of pinks and sky blues? The beauty feasts not only our bodies but our eyes and feeds our soul and spirit!

Greg was donating 2 ½ bushels of RAINBOW POPCORN still on the ear. We started right there teaching the process of how to make ready this first seed for storage and then later, preparing the first Sacred Seed Bundles to go out to the children. We had to clean the ears, shell the kernels off the cobs, clean kernels some more, and freeze the seed in airtight containers. All the time double labeling jars inside and out, and keeping good records on each type of seed. Many other seeds also were there by this time, being donated along Grandmother Flordemayo’s travels.

Germination tests were run on all larger seeds to help us know if seed is alive and how vigorous it might be when it is planted. This is done by putting a specific number of seeds into wet paper towels, rolling them up, labeling well, and keeping it damp for several days till sprouting occurs. Then we count the seed sprouts…3 sprouts out of 10 equals that seed variety is 30% alive. This also tells us they are a low enough a rate to have to plant more than double amount of seed to get a decent crop from this seed. If this is a very rare seed it is crucial to grow it out very soon for the risk of loosing it is high. Any seed with 30% or lower germination tests needs grown out as soon as possible to insure we still have it for our food. So Greg and I started to teach the process of seed saving and storing to Flordemayo , Patricio, and a few other volunteers.

We were to put 4 types of seeds in each bundle going out…a Corn, a Bean, a Squash, and 1 variety of edible Flower. As the days went by, we also watched from inside the hogan [that is the Temple of the Golden Child], receive a wrap around porch roof and the front porch concrete slab increase to more than double its size. Now it will be ready for the heat of the serious New Mexico summer.

More helpers arrived and we set to creating the first 30 Sacred Seed Bundles. These were made and blessed and went immediately into Grandmother Flordemayo’s luggage for a conference she was attending in 2 days in Kansas, USA. [She did not bring any bundles back home!] The Golden Child of our future generations has now been introduced to these highly nutritious primary, often heirloom food seeds. The wave has begun. (read more background on Dianna’s trip to NM at this link)